In the related art, there have been grill shutter devices capable of controlling a flow rate of air flowing into an engine compartment from a grill opening portion, based on an opening and closing operation of a shutter mechanism provided in the grill opening portion of a vehicle body front portion (for example, see JP-UM-58-139519A (Reference 1).
That is, for example, at the time of high-speed travelling, by limiting in-flow of the air into the engine compartment in the state of closing the shutter mechanism, aerodynamic performance (for example, “Cd value” or the like) thereof can be improved. Furthermore, at the time of engine start-up, by suppressing the flow rate flowing into the radiator, the warming-up time thereof can be shortened. Moreover, when the engine temperature tends to rise, by increasing the flow rate flowing into the engine compartment in the state of opening the shutter mechanism, the engine temperature can be suitably managed.
Furthermore, in recent years, a structure has been suggested which brings a front grill provided in the vehicle body front portion back into the grill opening portion based on external force acting during collision. For example, JP 2003-81034A (Reference 2) discloses a configuration in which a load transmission member is provided on the back surface of the front grill, and the collision load is transmitted to an accommodation device in the engine compartment such as a radiator. Moreover, it is possible to rapidly absorb the collision load and effectively alleviate the impact by adopting such a structure.
However, such an impact alleviation structure obtains high efficiency, on the other hand, there is a possibility that the accommodation device in the engine compartment may be influenced even when the collision load is relatively small, and there is a problem in that a labor and a time required for the repair and the exchange thereof, the cost or the like is a burden to a consumer. Moreover, in a vehicle including the grill shutter device, at the time of the vehicle collision, there is also a possibility that the grill shutter device behaves like the load transmission member in the related art, and thus the same problem may occur. Accordingly, in this respect, a compartment for improvement is further left.
A need thus exists for a grill shutter device which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.